‘Rooster’: Zach Braff on Directing Greg’s Frat Party Breakthrough for Episode 4

Rooster reached a turning point in the latest episode, “Angry, Like An Angry Person,” as Greg (Steve Carell) finally found his footing at Ludlow College, after being forced to join the staff to save his daughter Katie’s (Charly Clive) job after she accidentally burned her estranged husband Archie’s (Phil Dunster) house down. And helping bring it all to life is director Zach Braff. Fair warning that there are spoilers for Rooster Season 1 Episode 4 ahead!

Braff may currently be starring in ABC‘s hit Scrubs revival, but he wasn’t too busy to step behind the camera for the pivotal installment of this HBO comedy on behalf of longtime collaborator and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, who co-created Rooster with Matt Tarses. The episode also reunited Braff with Scrubs costar John C. McGinley and introduced him to the network series’ newest recruit, David Gridley, who plays a bartender in this episode that tracks Greg Russo’s attempt at finding his place among Ludlow’s community, in the same way that his daughter Katie is also trying to figure her situation out amid her husband’s infidelity that led to an unplanned pregnancy.

In the full Q&A below, Braff breaks down helming the episode, collaborating once more with Lawrence, tackling Greg’s breakthrough moment, whether he’d appear on the series, and much more.

HBO

You’ve collaborated with Bill Lawrence for many years, and have directed many of his shows, from Scrubs and Ted Lasso to Shrinking, and now Rooster. How does it feel to get that call to direct, especially for this HBO comedy?

Zach Braff: It’s an honor. I’ve always wanted to direct for HBO. For 25 years, [Bill]’s been my mentor, and I know exactly what he wants. I try to introduce him to things that are outside of the box of what he wants sometimes, and sometimes he lets me do that, and other times he cuts them out of the episode. I remember for Ted Lasso, I put all these insanely cool shots in, and I saw the final cut, and none of them were i,n and I was like, “What happened to those shots?” He’s like, “The camera’s not going to be like a huge character in this show.” Bill respects my directing because the Venn diagram of where we overlap is in the writing, the comedy, the storytelling, and in the heart, but Bill’s not fascinated by cameras and clever shots as much as I am. So we’re a good pairing because I know exactly what he wants in the edit room.

We’ve been sitting together for 25 years in the edit room, and I’ll be on set watching another director, and I’ll just stop them and go, “Bill’s gonna hate that, don’t do that.” And so I know what he wants, but also, we do this fun dance where I’ll shoot it in a more conventional way, so he has that option, but I’m gonna try and talk him into this [other idea].  He knows that’s why I think he likes me as a director because he knows I’m going to deliver exactly what he wants, but with the time extra time I have, I’m gonna try and push him into some cool s**t that, that he may not have thought of. And so I think that’s why we’re a good marriage.

HBO

What was so special about directing this particular episode of Rooster, which features similar mentorship storylines we’ve seen you collaborate on with Bill Lawrence in the past?

Bill’s shows almost all have a mentorship theme. That’s something he’s very interested in writing about, so I know that that’s always going to be a component. When [Tommy] says to [Greg], “You know, this is college, you can be whoever you want to be,” I think I got goosebumps on set. I was like, “Oh, this is the show.” And also another theme in Bill’s shows is community. If you look at all of these shows, they’re often about a group of people helping each other through their lives with love and community, and finding community, and [Greg] has no one. He was left by his wife, and it really threw him. When he’s at that frat party, you see that he’s gonna find community here. Some of them will be his students, some of them will be his peers, and there’ll be love interests. And so he goes on this sort of escapade throughout the whole night, seeing the different worlds that he’s going to be finding community in, and I just love that.

Your Scrubs costar David Gridley makes an appearance as a bartender. Was his casting done before or after he joined Scrubs? 

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Bill Bob likes his ensemble of people that he keeps using, as you can tell, and David was someone who came in to literally play handsome bartender. He had a couple of lines, and he was great in [the episode]. He has a little sort of flirty moment joking with Katie. And so it’s the perfect example of Bill going, “This guy’s great,” and they kept writing for him. They kept adding him to things, and then he read for Scrubs, and I was like, “Oh, I know this guy. He’s great. He’s a real candidate, and Bill loves him.”

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He crushed his audition for us, and then Bill, who wasn’t micromanaging the casting of Scrubs, he was in the trenches on Bad Monkey, which he was simultaneously doing. He goes, “If you guys don’t cast Gridley, I’m putting him on Bad Monkey. And I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.” [Bill said], “To be honest, he’ll have a better, bigger part on Scrubs than Bad Monkey, so you guys take him, and you should definitely cast him.” And so that’s how Gridley became a new Bill fave.

Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses have shared that they envision a three-season run for this series. Would you ever step in front of the camera for Rooster?

I would if [Bill] asked me to, in a second. When Bill asked me to do Bad Monkey, I didn’t know anything about Bad Monkey. I just thought Bill wanted to hang out with me in Miami for 10 days. So I went down there, and it was a really great part. I never say no to anything he wants. If he asked me to do a role on, I’d love to. My hunch is that because Johnny [C. McGinley]’s on it, and we’re so closely tied to Scrubs it might pull people out. You never want people to be like, “Oh my God, it’s JD and Cox,” you know? If there was something that wasn’t a scene with John, I’d love to, but I really want to direct more because it’s such a beautiful show.

One of the frat kids is named JD. Was that an intentional inside joke or a coincidence? 

I don’t know why he did that, why he chose the same name. [Bill]’s best friend in real life, John Doris, a real, brilliant doctor, was the impetus for Scrubs; he was his frat buddy, and he was like, “How could this guy possibly save anyone’s life?” And now he’s like the chief of medicine at a major hospital… if anything, I think maybe it was a nod to his [friend].

Rooster, Sundays, 10/9c, HBO and HBO Max

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